Mind, Heart and Wisdom
A Russian writer stated, "In Russia, there are two kinds of people: Smart and mean, and stupid and kind." In America, the mind and heart can be seen arranged in two significant misdirections, and with other more positive possibilities.
One common American misdirection is the Midwestern-style anti-intellectual "hey-mr-smartie-pants-who-do-you-think-you-are" crowd. These compensate for their intellectual inferiority by claiming that someone who has a mind can't also have a heart. The other is the emotionally repressive rationalists, reductionists, logical
positivists, behaviorists, "skeptics," eliminativists, and others who want to deny the validity of anything intuitive or heart-involving. These compensate for their emotional inferiority by claiming that those who have a heart can't also have a mind. Both are in grave error.
In effect, there are good hearts and bad hearts at every level of intellect. There are brilliant jerks like Freud, Hitler or J. Edgar Hoover and brilliant great men like Jefferson, Franklin, Gandhi or Martin Luther King. There are good-hearted dumb Forrest Gump types and there are stupid creeps who rape 9-year-old black girls and think that they are doing their country a favor. The dogma on both sides of this
is not in tune with reality, and to be able to see things for what they are it becomes necessary to be free of that dogma.
The heart can in fact produce insight and wisdom; and there are people of all intellectual levels who found, from going to significant lengths to develop the heart, that they came in possession of insight and understanding that they had not possessed previously. It is aso possible through development of the mind to come to the place of the heart - to the place of appreciation and wonder before the universe as its mysteries are deeper and deeper fathomed - to the place of respect for what has such intricacy, complexity and beauty; to the place of seeing the next person enough to empathize with them; to the place of fathoming the magnificence of the world enough to love it. Where both mind and heart merge into insight, compassion, understanding and love, is the place of wisdom. Which, like light that is both energy and matter (both wave and particle), becomes the point of intersection of mind and heart, where they exist together as one at the place of embodied infinity.
Many genuine scientists and mathematicians (as opposed to "skeptics," "rationalists" and others of similar persuasion) develop kind hearts, as that is the appropriate logical reaction to genuinely beholding magnificence of the Universe. Many people who work with the matters of heart develop very sharp minds, as that is what it takes to adequately fathom, nurture and resolve matters of human experience for
existent and long-term benefit.
The mind can therefore be a valid path to the heart, and the heart to the mind.
It therefore follows that an effective path to take is the integrative one of mind and heart feeding into each other and growing each other as well as themselves into both mentally fathomed and emotionally experienced universe-attuned wisdom.
One common American misdirection is the Midwestern-style anti-intellectual "hey-mr-smartie-pants-who-do-you-think-you-are" crowd. These compensate for their intellectual inferiority by claiming that someone who has a mind can't also have a heart. The other is the emotionally repressive rationalists, reductionists, logical
positivists, behaviorists, "skeptics," eliminativists, and others who want to deny the validity of anything intuitive or heart-involving. These compensate for their emotional inferiority by claiming that those who have a heart can't also have a mind. Both are in grave error.
In effect, there are good hearts and bad hearts at every level of intellect. There are brilliant jerks like Freud, Hitler or J. Edgar Hoover and brilliant great men like Jefferson, Franklin, Gandhi or Martin Luther King. There are good-hearted dumb Forrest Gump types and there are stupid creeps who rape 9-year-old black girls and think that they are doing their country a favor. The dogma on both sides of this
is not in tune with reality, and to be able to see things for what they are it becomes necessary to be free of that dogma.
The heart can in fact produce insight and wisdom; and there are people of all intellectual levels who found, from going to significant lengths to develop the heart, that they came in possession of insight and understanding that they had not possessed previously. It is aso possible through development of the mind to come to the place of the heart - to the place of appreciation and wonder before the universe as its mysteries are deeper and deeper fathomed - to the place of respect for what has such intricacy, complexity and beauty; to the place of seeing the next person enough to empathize with them; to the place of fathoming the magnificence of the world enough to love it. Where both mind and heart merge into insight, compassion, understanding and love, is the place of wisdom. Which, like light that is both energy and matter (both wave and particle), becomes the point of intersection of mind and heart, where they exist together as one at the place of embodied infinity.
Many genuine scientists and mathematicians (as opposed to "skeptics," "rationalists" and others of similar persuasion) develop kind hearts, as that is the appropriate logical reaction to genuinely beholding magnificence of the Universe. Many people who work with the matters of heart develop very sharp minds, as that is what it takes to adequately fathom, nurture and resolve matters of human experience for
existent and long-term benefit.
The mind can therefore be a valid path to the heart, and the heart to the mind.
It therefore follows that an effective path to take is the integrative one of mind and heart feeding into each other and growing each other as well as themselves into both mentally fathomed and emotionally experienced universe-attuned wisdom.
posted by Ilya Shambat at 4:21 AM
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